


We Were Lost

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Supernatural AU: Croatoan/End'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:40:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ashley prompted: something with hester and inais and rachel perhaps? with the prompt golden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Lost

In the bright golden morning of Lucifer’s rising, as he prowls the earth like a roaring lion, the last of the angels leave. Hestiel and Inias are among the last, Raphael ordering the tattered remnants of their garrison to serve as the rearguard—stand, watching over their siblings as opposed to the humans of earth.

Hestiel ties the words of protest down, lets them sizzle and burn in a flare of heat and grace. Tries to ignore the way Inias sings a human hymn in a language not Enochian, a language with shallow depth and too broad a focus, clumsy on their many tongues, discordant, jagged waves disrupting the energy of their grace, scuffing the intensity of their celestial intent with greasy, human fingerprints.

Inias doesn’t see it—never seeing, unless it matters—resting eyes upon something similar to the cirrus clouds, gilded with a golden sun, scudding a blue sky, tugging at Hestiel’s multi-limbed being for them to look, look, look again—because it’s not frozen water crystalizing into patterns, but grace spun from the earth’s surface, clinging, wispy fingers grasping after their departing angels.

They recognize the grace—one of their fallen brethren.  _No_ not really making a move to stop Inias from floating closer, from reaching out with their own grace—to almost, but not nearly, touch.

Inias speaks with something that sounds like sparrow song from his small bird head with the vibrant plumage.  _We have to see—we have to bring them with us, or else what kind of watcher would we be?_

They pause, they reach out together—their grace mingling with the fallen one, stranded, marooned on the earth below, neither one prepared for the strength in the fragile ribbons of grace, pulling them down in a web of light, entangling their graces so they cannot fight through, blades forged of angel grace strung too tight, too close to cut them free—the gravity pulling their graces from their shapes, and Hestiel ‘s scream, Inias’s cry finally cleaves them in two, peeling their grace from their being, barely leaving them with the cognizance to turn their hearing back to their once human charges.

Hestiel doubts there is a human on earth who can pray louder than two angels caught in a spun web of forgotten, mislaid grace—but there are, the entire earth crying out for salvation. And they guide Inias to the loudest prayers, humans about to die from the Croatoan virus and Hestiel says  _Gather the rest of your grace, Inias, don’t let the fall tear it from your grasp_ and they close their eyes, and they hold on tight, so tight as, with their dying breaths, the humans grant them admission, and they unleash the grace through the diseased flesh, burning the dross from skin and muscles and bone and marrow.

Hestiel lets the human go by her request, feels Inias do the same, and they shove these lost human souls with the last precious remnants of their grace towards the abandoned celestial gates.

Hestiel staggers for a moment, and Inias grips them by their new elbows, all jagged and sharp, tearing the space around them with their bony knees and their curved fingers. They nod into each other’s face (Hestiel noticing the grey blue eyes, the dirty brown hair, the bloodied lips) and turn as one towards the croats, drawing angel baldes (hollow without their grace) from their sides.

Even in clumsy flesh puppets such as these, it’s a relief that they fight in tune with each other. That they can still smite the wicked, those touched with the decrepit presence of Lucifer and all he pulled down with him into hell.

After it’s done, Inias falls to his knees, palms broad against his thighs, examining the way his pants stretch over the muscle, the flesh.

Hestiel raises their head, stares straight into the sun until this vessel’s weak eyes  blots with blue spots and red, searing pain. “Raphael! Father! God!”  Hestiel licks their lips with the vessel’s fat, wet, slimy tongue. The spit chaps in the wind, and they rub their mouth with their wrist, tasting dirt and grit and blood. “We’re here!”

The enochian is clumsy and strange upon this wedge of sluggish flesh, the syllables chipping against these heavy teeth.

There is no answer.

“We’ve been forsaken,” Hestiel forces out through stiff lips.

Inias strings his fingers through hers, clasping her hand until it hurts. “We can find the other angel.”

Hestiel nods. “Yes. Yes we can.”

They travel together across pitted roads, cracked highways. Sometimes, in the more residential areas, they’ll see houses with smashed windows. Unbelievably, a small tv plays the  _Wizard of Oz_  on repeat: follow the yellow brick road, the munchkins sing, follow the yellow brick road.

“To the emerald city,” Inias says, dreamily. “In the book—“

Hestiel hiccoughs because Inias reads human literature?

“—the Emerald City was only green because the inhabitants wore glasses with green tinted lenses. It wasn’t really made out of emeralds.”

Hestiel buttons up their lips. They don’t care about human literature.

Human literature isn’t real.

They cleave their way through croatoan hordes with their angel blades, just simple metal now without the burning fire of holy grace. Anyone could wield a sword such as this.

Inias picks up a gun for the first time, blows off the head of a shuffling, shambling zombie with a gaping, bleeding jaw.

Bullets are a problem—no one makes bullets anymore.

They sit around a clean fire, burning low with little smoke so that nothing will give them away,as Hestiel counts their package of bullets. Only one, just the one box, not even full. Ten bullets.

That won’t last long at all.

They rub their mouth with their fist, teeth clinking against a gold wedding ring, which they twist round and round that thin line of bone that could crack with the least little pressure. They remember that bullets are made of metal.

Hestiel takes off the ring, drops it into the vessel’s coat pocket. Throughout the towns, they find bodies abandoned in the street. They search for wedding rings, necklaces, earrings, fine gold chains and put them in a sack, and build a fire hot enough to melt them down, shaping bullets with the skilled fingers of warriors, soldiers of god and now lost behind the lines.

They crawl through forests on their hands and knees, and Hestiel learns how to spark the abandoned cars on the highway to life until their gas runs dry while Inias plays recordings at full blast until Hestiel turns the volume down.

They crash and hide in abandoned malls, breaking through vending machines with their swords or the butt of a pistol, ripping through the wrappings on chips to satisfy the hunger gnawing through their bellies.

Inias finds a music store, a guitar with gilded strings, and he plucks tunes on them—enochian and human and neither.

It’s only when Hestiel falls asleep for the first time that they realize those other tunes, those final tunes, had been Inias’s songs.

In the Midwest, they pass through streams that dust their skin with fool’s gold, they find herds of wild horses, and creep after deer in the shadows. They come to a crossroads, four churches at each corner, the sun bleeding through gold and red and blue stained glass imagery of god and his sons and his saints.

Hestiel swallows hard, stands in a shaft of yellow sun, looks up into the static face of god. “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?”

Inias takes their elbow. “Come on,” he says. “Come on.”

Hestiel shakes their head, the vessel’s face constricting and twisting up into something Inias would call a sneer. “No. No more.” Bends down, finds a chunk of rock, a bit of rubble in their fists, hurls it through the window, shattering the face of god and all his angels.

Inias pulls them away.

Later, while Inias sleeps, Hestiel crouches in front of the side mirror of a jeep. Touches the jut of their chin with their dirty finger tips, smudging the skin there with ash and oil. Their cheeks are gaunt and hollow. They huff against the glass, fogging it up, and they can smell its rancid odor—like bacteria sleeping in the cracks of their molars and the gums, and they clap their palm over their lips, and suck in heaving, steadying breaths.

  
Their hair is yellow, greasy, and long—going beyond their shoulders.  Croats tug it with their fists, pulls their scalp. It tangles, and the wind blows it into their mouth, getting stuck between their teeth and tickling their throat, choking on it.

Hestiel hates it, and so they wrap it around their fist, strings it tight away from their scalp, and saws at the length of hair with the blunt edge of an angel sword.

“No more gods,” they say. “No more” as clumps of hair fall to their feet.

The next morning, Inias blinks at the jagged edge of the cut, and they say, “You can call me Hester now.” And they look away from the way Inias’s face crumples, the way his mouth opens into a tiny  _oh_. Turns away from the way he reaches out for them.

Sometimes they run into a flock of humans, herding together, trying to face the world. They tell Hester that there is a Camp Chitaqua, and that one of the inhabitants is rumored to be a fallen angel.

They don’t see Inias bumping into them, almost drunkenly, and pocketing their fine gold rings and other metal bits of jewelry and toys, so that they can replace the bullets they’ve lost.

  
For Inias’s guitar (because a child, one of the few children they’ve seen, saw it, pointed, and began to squall like a storm), they offer them gallons of gas and, before Inias can nod, Hester jerks him back. “You don’t want this,” they say. “Look at it. Look at the chipped wood. The way Inias plays this thing for so long, the gild paint’s begun to flake off. Look at it. Not very pretty at all. Not even in tune—“ and Hester takes it, plays something terribly in a jangling melody that force the humans to cover their ears.  “It would be an unfair trade—don’t you think?”

Inias smiles at them, squeezes their shoulder as they pass, and Hester marvels at the way the warmth seeps through the skin, settling somewhere near their stomach.

Too soon, winter’s upon them, and they huddle up close to each other under abandoned jackets and fires that blaze too bright for warmth. Then the snows and rains come, and the forests become wet and, hands shaking, chilled to the bone,  Hester cannot force a spark to catch on the wet wood so Inias takes their cold hands in his, kisses the wrist and the knuckle, before whispering, “I’ll take care of this—close your eyes—“

And because they are tired, they do, and it’s only when the crack of wood smashing against bone rips the graveyard chill of the air asunder that their eyes fling open, and see Inias standing in the shards of his guitar, all painted gold gone from the strings, from the face of it, cannot stop watching as Inias bends his knee, and gathers the pieces into kindling, and tries to light the fire with his shaking, shaking hands.

Hester forces themself to crawl forward, to steady his hand with theirs, and to light the fire together.

Inias bends into them, head first on their shoulder, then in their lap. And they comb their fingers through his hair, they croon half remembered songs and hymns and hallelujah and Mary had a little lamb until Inias falls into a fitful sleep.

Their clothes tatter into holes. Their shoes held together by duct tape. Without socks, their feet bleed first, then blister, and harden into callouses. Their scalps itch with lice.

Staggering, hunger, faint, weak, tongues thick with words unsaid because they lacked the spit to say anything, the strength to fashion coherent thought (Hester remembers when they did not need tongues or mouths), they stumble into Camp Chitaqua.

The guards force them to their knees, then drag them to a hut in the center, a hut with beads for doors. For the first time since hell, they look upon the righteous man. He says, “You made it here?” Takes in their ragged appearance. “Human refugees, you know—” he laughs bitterly.

Hester and Inias look at each other. “We didn’t come here for refuge,” Hester says, glad their voice sounds like steel again when wet with a little bit of water. “We came for the angel.”

Dean licks his lips. “Not sure it’s gonna do you much good. Even he says that he uh—can’t strap his angel wings on anymore.”

“We don’t care,” Inias says. “We’ve come for the angel.”

“Well, I care,” Dean says.

The beads ripple and laugh against each other, then a voice they haven’t heard for years, for a millennia, says, “They’re angels, Dean. Of course they care.”

Dean’s mouth drops, and he gestures at them. “Their eyes are yellow with jaundice—they’re not  _angels._ ”

But Hester and Inias turn around—they look upon their brother, they look upon—“Castiel,” Inias breathes, a smile bright on his lips.

“Hi,” Castiel says—smiling too with all his teeth.

“You’re alive—“ and Inias goes to Castiel, takes his hands in his. “We thought—“

“You—“ Hester says, remembering, realizing—that spider web veil of grace in the sky. Their breath shudders in their borrowed lungs.

“I know,” Castiel says. “Hello, Hestiel.”

“I go by Hester now,” they say.  Still, it’s too hard to breath, like they want to tear the skin from their bones so that they could get a little bit of goddamn air. “It was your grace we found—reaching out for the last of the angels.”

Castiel frowns. “I suppose that could have been the case.” He spreads his hands, the wooden beads around his wrist clunking against each other. “But I’ve been down here—separated from the host.”

“You pulled us down,” Hester says. “Pulled us down from heaven just like—“ and they bite down on their lips, looks with scorn upon the righteous man, shakes the dust and dirt and blood from their shambling boots. “The very touch of you corrupts.” Their hands curve into claws, pulling at the ragged ends of their hair. “Ever since hell—“

Inias looks down at his feet.  “Stop. Please.”

Hester heaves a shuddering breath, chews their cheeks raw.

“You’re sick,” Castiel says. “We’ve seen it happen in the camp.” He goes over to Dean, brushing up against him carelessly, before tipping alcohol from a crude jar into a glass, which he gives to Hester.

Their fingers brush against each other in the exchange, but Hester burns it away by gulping the alcohol down, relishing the way it scourges their throat and gnaws their belly hollow and raw.

“Sometimes a blood transfusion will help,” Castiel says. “And we have a small bank of it. If you’re interested.”

Hester clenches their hands. Says, “We’re really sick?”

And Castiel can’t even look into their faces when he nods. “I’ll take you there, if you want.”

“Okay,” Hester says.

They’re about to part the beaded curtain, when Inias says, voice a little slurred with a little alcohol of his own, “This is my blood.”

They pause, then they bend over. They laugh until their sides hurt, until Castiel loops an around each of their shoulders, pressing their heads against him with a broad palm.

“Do you think there is forgiveness to be had?”

And Hester says, stumbling beside them both, “Who cares? I am in need of none.”

“Not from god, perhaps,” Castiel says.

“Or from me,” Inias says, squeezing Castiel’s hand.

Hester says nothing, has gotten used to the warm tingle in their belly. “Is there anything to drink, anything to eat?”

“I’ll find something for you,” Castiel says.

While the camp medic prepares the transfusion, Hester peers into a warped mirror, frowning at their face, pulling at the lid of their eyes. They really were yellow, and Hester bites their lips until blood smears their dirty teeth, remembering when the angels were as golden as a newborn dawn.


End file.
